North Hennepin Community College Hosts Jan. 16 Racial Healing Event
Tuesday, Jan. 16 marks the National Day of Racial Healing. “Two Brooklyns, One Vision” is an event series in Brooklyn Park designed to help the community understand racial trauma in an inclusive space.
The Racial Justice and Healing Initiative’s committee planner Claudia Diggs said the event arose from a common goal held by the cities of Brooklyn Park and Brooklyn Center. They hoped to bring people together to create positive change in the community amid racial injustice.
“Building people up and giving them the tools and skills to be confident in helping dismantle systems of oppression,” Diggs said. “The cities can’t do it by themselves. They need the whole community to come together, recognize the traumas that people have experienced. Understand them, sit with them for awhile and then go and move into action.”
One way the initiative seeks to accomplish this goal is through community events. The group held its inaugural event in October, which hosted a Q&A with Yusef Salaam, one of the “Exonerated Five” in the 1989 New York Central Park jogger rape case.
Day of Racial Healing
Dr. Raj Sethuraju, a community-based activism researcher and educator, will speak at the Jan. 16 event.
“He’s an educator and very passionate about making people feel whole and helping them to heal from traumas in the past,” Diggs said.
Diggs said Dr. Raj’s presentation will help give community members the tools to move forward together and heal from racial traumas.
The event begins with a free dinner at 5:30 p.m. on Jan. 16 at North Hennepin Community College in Brooklyn Park. The presentation and discussion will run from 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Diggs said everyone should come.
“It doesn’t matter where you are on the scale of racial traumas and how to help heal communities from it,” Diggs said. “There’s power in numbers. The more people that have a certain or same skillset, they can come and build on that and help move the community forward as a whole.”
More information and a link to register is available on the Brooklyn Center website.
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